The news release says Rep. Jo Ann Davis "was successful in securing" several hundred thousand dollars in federal money for a Caroline County sewer project and a Fredericksburg anti-gang and drug task force.
What the release doesn't say is that Davis voted against the omnibus bill that contains that funding.
Davis, who represents the Fredericksburg area, said she voted against the $388 billion spending plan because it was rushed through the House and lawmakers didn't have time to read what was in it. The 1st District Republican was one of 51 House members to vote against the bill.
"My 'no' vote is against the process. There was a foot-and-a-half-thick bill that we had to vote on that we had roughly two hours to review," Davis said. "No way could you review that bill in that time period."
The omnibus bill was an amalgamation of nine different spending bills Congress hadn't acted on. Somewhere in one of those was $300,000 for the new sewer system in the Dawn community of Caroline County, and $250,000 to establish the regional drug and gang task force.
"Those projects wouldn't have existed had we not put them in," Davis said. "I sent letters to the chairman, pushed the bills from Day One. I voted against the omnibus bill, I did not vote against the projects."
Davis said Congress has passed appropriations legislation in this manner--throwing a lot of different legislation into one bill--for the past three years. The first two years, she voted for it.
"It was poor legislating on our part to put an omnibus bill through like that, has been for the last three years," Davis said. "The exception is becoming the norm, and that is not the way we're supposed to legislate in Congress."
This year, a brief scan of just a few pork projects in the bill, along with news that it included a provision allowing congressional committee chairmen and ranking members to look at any citizen's IRS records, persuaded her to vote otherwise.
According to The Associated Press, the IRS provision is being removed from the bill before it is sent to President Bush for his signature.
Davis also objected to a provision rescinding $300 million in defense spending that Congress had approved earlier in the year.
"Why are we rescinding $300 million bucks from an appropriations bill we passed earlier in the year, when we are at a war?" she said. "That was probably the key that triggered me looking at it and say, what else have we done?"
A list of some objectionable pork projects compiled by Davis' office staff includes such things as $50,000 for feral hog control in Missouri, $167,000 for "horn fly research" in Alabama, $5 million for a Strom Thurmond Fitness and Wellness Center at the University of South Carolina, and $1.5 million for a Missouri Historical Society for Richard Gephardt Archive.
"You're going to have legislators say, 'Well, she doesn't think her stuff is pork, but she thinks our stuff is pork,'" Davis acknowledged.
But, she said, the sewer project, for example, will provide clean drinking water, thus keeping people off health department rolls.
Davis added that she also voted against raising the federal debt limit.
"How can you turn around the very next day and vote to spend billions of dollars when you don't even know what it's being spent on?" she asked.
To reach CHELYEN DAVIS: 804/782-9362 cdavis@freelancestar.com